Monday, January 6, 2014

Assessing Australia and England Following the 2013-14 Ashes

Before the 2013-14 ‘Ashes’ series I
wrote that I thought Australia had a fair chance of winning the series.
This was due to the English cricket team being only about ‘8 per cent’ better
than Australia, based on the Reliance
ICC Player Rankings, which I thought may well be overcome by Australia
having the home ground advantage.Well, as we now know, Australia not only won the series, but
won it easily (‘five-nil! fivenil fivenil fivenil…). So what changed? Let’s
have a look at the line-ups as the ICC Player Rankings now assesses them.

In contrast to before the series started, Australia is now
assessed as being superior in every aspect except for the batting ability of
their bowlers (though even that seems debatable given the batting averages for
the series). Before the series, England’s main advantage was assessed to be its
batting. However, for the Australians, Warner, Haddin, Rogers, and Smith are
now assessed to be much better than they were before the series, while Cook,
Bell and Prior are now assessed to be somewhat worse. The English team is also
assessed to have suffered from Trott’s departure after the first Test, when he
was replaced by new boy Ben Stokes, although looking at the Ashes alone Stokes’
batting average stacked up relatively well to his countrymen.

On the bowling side, man of the series Mitchell Johnson was
much, much better than his pre-series rating suggested, and Ryan Harris was
also better, while the now-retired Graeme Swann and James Anderson took steps
back. The net result is that, while England’s bowling was assessed to be
slightly better pre-series, now it is Australia that are assessed to have the
somewhat stronger bowling line-up.

Overall then, England’s ‘8 per cent’ advantage
has now turned into an ‘8 per cent’ deficit. Add to that the fact that
Australia was playing on their home turf, and the eventual result becomes more
explicable. Still, even then one might not have expected Australia to win quite
so easily - the rest of the margin then might be able to put down to nebulous
concepts such as ‘form’, ‘luck’ … or maybe ‘overcoaching’.